Hawthorne High to become first South Bay high school to offer prestigious program

Hawthorne High is set to become the first high school in the South Bay or Harbor Area to offer a prestigious curriculum called International Baccalaureate, an accelerated program that rivals Advanced Placement and whose most successful graduates can enter college as sophomores.

The intensive program is known for its global bent, as well as its focus on writing and critical thinking over multiple-choice testing.

That its introduction to the South Bay will occur in a school serving one of the area's most economically disadvantaged populations rather than one of the many affluent and high-performing schools is in itself remarkable -- and, some would say, a coup for Hawthorne High.

"It's a pretty exclusive program," said Mark Newell, the school's principal. "When students are applying to college, if things work out right, their first year of college could be paid for."

Starting in the fall, the two-year program at Hawthorne High will serve a cohort of 44 juniors. The students will mostly travel from class to class as a unit.

To earn an IB diploma, students must demonstrate proficiency in another language, write an extensive research paper and take a capstone course called the "theory of knowledge," in which they explore questions such as "What is taken for granted in a community?" and "How can we decide which beliefs we ought to check further?"

Although IB classes carry the same weight as AP courses on college applications, the curriculum is occasionally criticized by politically conservative groups that detect a whiff of liberal bias in the international emphasis.

"There is a perception that IB is a liberal left-wing Kumbaya kind of thing," Newell said, noting how classrooms often tackle topics such as the lack of schools in Zimbabwe or the destruction of forests in Brazil. "The perception is it's all peace, love and joy -- it's not. It's 'Here's the problem and how do we solve it?' "

A couple of years ago, Redondo Union High tried to blaze the IB trail for South Bay high schools, but the effort was shot down. In that case, the dissension was not about politics so much as local issues, such as cost and workload for teachers.

Meanwhile, El Segundo Middle School for three years has been working toward the goal of becoming the South Bay's first middle school in the area to fully adopt the program.

There, too, teachers have complained about the added workload, but Principal Jack Plotkin said he is noticing less resistance.

"There are some teachers who are amazing, who are cheerleaders and go above and beyond," he said. "I feel like everybody is at a minimum going along with it."

(Union officials in El Segundo couldn't be reached for comment this week.)

Interestingly, another source of resistance is occasionally the students.

"Sometimes we get pushback from kids -- often it's the kids who do well on multiple-choice tests and who are really good memorizers," he said. "They want to be told what to do."

Plotkin said those students ultimately benefit from IB assignments that bear more semblance to the real world.

"That's what happens in our jobs -- when our boss gives us a task to do, we don't get step-by-step instructions on exactly how to do it," he said. "We have to use our creativity on how to approach and solve the problem."

In an era where public high schools increasingly compete with one another for students, and, therefore money, programs like IB can be an attractive draw. Hawthorne High has found itself on the losing end of this game in recent years, with many of its students getting lured away by nearby charter schools such as Da Vinci High and the Hawthorne Math & Science Academy.

In the past decade, its enrollment has fallen to 1,900 from 2,900. (Some of the attrition is attributable to an internal reshuffling of students within the Centinela Valley high school district.)

Becoming officially IB certified requires extensive teacher training and involves inspection visits from outside IB consultants. The process can take up to four years. Hawthorne High received its authorization in May.

Taking the plunge is a bit of a monetary gamble because the program is expensive.

At Hawthorne High, the price tag amounts to about $100,000 a year, Newell said. Much of that goes toward training, but it also covers the fees for end-of-the-year tests that, in more affluent districts, are often passed on to the students.

About a year ago, when the state budget crisis was still in full tilt, the Centinela Valley teachers union was wary of the program.

"For a while it felt it was quite a luxury to spend all this money on this program that is actually only going to serve a small fraction of the entire student body," said Jack Foreman, president of the union and a counselor at Hawthorne High.

Now that the financial outlook has stabilized, Foreman is much more supportive.

"It enhances the prestige of the district and the school," he said. "It sounds like a really outstanding program."